This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

No-Drama Obama and the Middle Kingdom

If ever proof was needed of the disconnect between the Mainstream Media (MSM) and reality, it was on show this week. While the pundits lamented that Obama looked weak during his 9 day trip to Asia, Amy Goodman was interviewing British writer Martin Jacques (pronounced Jakes) about his new book: “When China Rules the World”.

According to Jacques, China isn’t so much a nation-state as a “civilization state”. In other words, while nation states didn’t form until the second millennium of our era, this vast country has shared one civilization for a couple of thousand years. China’s civilization is China, even today. That civilization was China under a long line of Emperors, under Mao’s communism and the Great Leap Forward, and it’s still China under Hu Jintao’s state capitalism.

As an example Jacques cited the rise of Mandarin in what used to be China’s “tributary states” - the rest of Asia. Mandarin is often taught as a third language, after English. Jacques expects that American ways of thinking that spread around the world, will be replaced by Chinese ways of thinking. This is of more than anecdotal interest: the question of whether they are competitors, challengers or a threat to the United States, are not the way the Chinese do see the world.

Perhaps because he went to school in Indonesia, Obama understands the way the Chinese think, answering critics that the purpose of this first visit was establish a rapport. Those who criticize him for not “getting more” our of his visit to China, not only don’t understand China, they live on another planet. China owns our economy, lock, stock and barrel. Where would we be if they sold off their Treasury bonds? As for it someday being a military threat, nothing in what I have read, including the conservative British Economist supports that suspicion. Yes, they are determined to get their hands on as much of the world’s raw materials as possible in this genuine leap forward, as I have written before, sending engineers and workmen to exploit riches in Africa and Latin America. But we can hardly fault them for doing, under state capitalism, what we did under robber baron capitalism.

As for human rights, are we so sure that we’re better than they when continue sending people to foreign countries to be tortured to protect our security? Every government does things that Human Rights defenders disapprove, depending on its particular circumstances. We do renditions, China locks up dissidents. There is dirty laundry everywhere, and everywhere, citizens fight back. Every government shares with its pairs reprehensible practices of one kind or another against individuals.

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Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.